Mint is software specifically designed for managing your money and is now part of the Intuit product portfolio.
Keeping tabs on your finances can get complicated if you have numerous bank accounts as well as investments, pension contributions and savings to monitor alongside your daily outgoings. And that’s why money management app Mint is therefore perfect for covering all bases and joining up those dots.
Being owned by Intuit, which is also behind TurboTax and Quickbooks, means security is at the forefront of its appeal. It’s therefore reasonable to expect a well-designed and engineered package and that’s exactly what you get.
Mint generates revenue to cover its free status by delivering affiliate offers, but if you can put up with that aspect of the software then you’ve got a very decent package at your disposal. However, you might also want to try Quicken, Banktree, Money Dashboard or Moneydance.
Connecting to your bank accounts has been engineered to be safe and secure (Image credit: Intuit)
Pricing
One of the best things about Mint is that it is absolutely free to use, no matter if you’re signed up to enjoy its charms on iOS, Android or a good old desktop computer or laptop. Considering that Mint comes with a plethora of great features, and delivers a great user experience, the fact that it's free makes the software very appealing.
However, it should be noted that Mint has to earn its keep one way or another and so, as a result, there are affiliate offers to deal with along the way. That’s fine if you’re in the market for another credit card, but it has to be said that some of the offers are less appealing. While we understand the need to turn a profit, this is perhaps the only real downside of the Mint experience.
The Mint interface offers a quick but comprehensive overview of your finances (Image credit: Intuit)
Features
Mint might sound like a fairly simplistic proposition and it’s certainly not complicated to master, but the options it provides you with are actually many and varied. The action centres on a few main features, with Mint offering the ability to connect to your bank, or banks, and other financial interests along with keeping an eye on your credit score.
The good thing is that you can also ‘unplug’ these as and when you need to, or if you want to block out specific areas of your finances. Doing all this is really easy and involves nothing more than adding in accounts with the odd screen tap or two.
As you’d expect, Mint keeps a firm grip on security and uses 256-bit data encryption, plus VeriSign security scanning. In fact, as you pick through the Mint landscape you’ll find that there are plenty of places where its meticulous authentication procedures safeguard both you and your data.
Fear not; this is most notable on the app editions, which take into consideration what would happen if your phone gets lost or stolen. Mint subsequently allows you to delete your financial data remotely.
Mint works best on mobile devices but can be used via a desktop or laptop connection too (Image credit: Intuit)
Performance
Mint is all about connectivity as it taps into your various financial interests and keeps the picture updated in a dynamic fashion. That’s good news, as you should therefore always have an overview that’s bang up to date. We’d heard some reports that earlier incarnations were subject to connectivity issues, with connecting to specific banks proving problematical on occasions.
However, these days Mint seems to be in very good shape, with its carefully honed interface being complemented by its ‘always on’ edge. If you're running it on a mobile device, be it an Apple iPhone, iPad, Watch or on the Android platform you should find that it ticks over just fine. In fact, in most respects the mobile edition of the Mint experience is the best way to be using it. The whole thing just works.
One of the finest aspects of Mint is its edition for the Apple Watch (Image credit: Intuit)
Ease of use
Getting to grips with Mint is very straightforward, with nothing major to get your head around. In fact, due to the way the software has been designed it works in a very intuitive manner.
While it’s easy enough to find your way around the desktop web browser edition, it’s the app route that really bristles with stress-free functionality. Indeed, the Apple Watch version features a crisp and clear interface that gives you all the information you need in a very good-on-the-eyes format. Getting Mint up and running is also wonderfully easy.
You’ll need to sign up with a username and password and once you're past that stage it’s simply a case of hooking up to your different accounts. This starts with banks, but you can add on every other aspect of your financial world in much the same way.
Mint lets you plug-in your online bank accounts and other financial interests (Image credit: Intuit)
Support
One of the most appealing aspects of the Mint experience is its ease of use and fuss-free functionality. In that respect there is not too much that requires support, although thankfully its creators have produced a sizeable FAQ area within the application.
Dipping into this section of the Mint app lets you find answers to most questions, although it requires persistence if you want to get to the bottom of less commonly asked questions. As a bonus, however, there is a chat option that lets you get in touch with staff around the clock at the Mint headquarters.
One of the best aspects of Mint is the ease with which you can get up and running (Image credit: Intuit)
Final verdict
If you struggle with keeping your finances in order, and even if you don't for that matter, Mint makes a lot of sense. It’s free, despite the downside of being beefed up to make money using affiliate offers within the software, and is very easy to use. In terms of getting started Mint could not be easier.
With the capacity of adding in some or all of your financial interests, and also removing them where needed, it is super flexible. The mobile editions deliver really good experiences too, with even the Apple Watch option being detailed and delightful to use, with piles of information on your financial status being available at a glance.
Mint also tops it all off with a safe and secure build, one that provides you with the reassurance that your sensitive data is in good hands.
Mint is software specifically designed for managing your money and is now part of the Intuit product portfolio.
Keeping tabs on your finances can get complicated if you have numerous bank accounts as well as investments, pension contributions and savings to monitor alongside your daily outgoings. And that’s why money management app Mint is therefore perfect for covering all bases and joining up those dots.
Being owned by Intuit, which is also behind TurboTax and Quickbooks, means security is at the forefront of its appeal. It’s therefore reasonable to expect a well-designed and engineered package and that’s exactly what you get.
Mint generates revenue to cover its free status by delivering affiliate offers, but if you can put up with that aspect of the software then you’ve got a very decent package at your disposal. However, you might also want to try Quicken, Banktree, Money Dashboard or Moneydance.
Connecting to your bank accounts has been engineered to be safe and secure (Image credit: Intuit)
Pricing
One of the best things about Mint is that it is absolutely free to use, no matter if you’re signed up to enjoy its charms on iOS, Android or a good old desktop computer or laptop. Considering that Mint comes with a plethora of great features, and delivers a great user experience, the fact that it's free makes the software very appealing.
However, it should be noted that Mint has to earn its keep one way or another and so, as a result, there are affiliate offers to deal with along the way. That’s fine if you’re in the market for another credit card, but it has to be said that some of the offers are less appealing. While we understand the need to turn a profit, this is perhaps the only real downside of the Mint experience.
The Mint interface offers a quick but comprehensive overview of your finances (Image credit: Intuit)
Features
Mint might sound like a fairly simplistic proposition and it’s certainly not complicated to master, but the options it provides you with are actually many and varied. The action centres on a few main features, with Mint offering the ability to connect to your bank, or banks, and other financial interests along with keeping an eye on your credit score.
The good thing is that you can also ‘unplug’ these as and when you need to, or if you want to block out specific areas of your finances. Doing all this is really easy and involves nothing more than adding in accounts with the odd screen tap or two.
As you’d expect, Mint keeps a firm grip on security and uses 256-bit data encryption, plus VeriSign security scanning. In fact, as you pick through the Mint landscape you’ll find that there are plenty of places where its meticulous authentication procedures safeguard both you and your data.
Fear not; this is most notable on the app editions, which take into consideration what would happen if your phone gets lost or stolen. Mint subsequently allows you to delete your financial data remotely.
Mint works best on mobile devices but can be used via a desktop or laptop connection too (Image credit: Intuit)
Performance
Mint is all about connectivity as it taps into your various financial interests and keeps the picture updated in a dynamic fashion. That’s good news, as you should therefore always have an overview that’s bang up to date. We’d heard some reports that earlier incarnations were subject to connectivity issues, with connecting to specific banks proving problematical on occasions.
However, these days Mint seems to be in very good shape, with its carefully honed interface being complemented by its ‘always on’ edge. If you're running it on a mobile device, be it an Apple iPhone, iPad, Watch or on the Android platform you should find that it ticks over just fine. In fact, in most respects the mobile edition of the Mint experience is the best way to be using it. The whole thing just works.
One of the finest aspects of Mint is its edition for the Apple Watch (Image credit: Intuit)
Ease of use
Getting to grips with Mint is very straightforward, with nothing major to get your head around. In fact, due to the way the software has been designed it works in a very intuitive manner.
While it’s easy enough to find your way around the desktop web browser edition, it’s the app route that really bristles with stress-free functionality. Indeed, the Apple Watch version features a crisp and clear interface that gives you all the information you need in a very good-on-the-eyes format. Getting Mint up and running is also wonderfully easy.
You’ll need to sign up with a username and password and once you're past that stage it’s simply a case of hooking up to your different accounts. This starts with banks, but you can add on every other aspect of your financial world in much the same way.
Mint lets you plug-in your online bank accounts and other financial interests (Image credit: Intuit)
Support
One of the most appealing aspects of the Mint experience is its ease of use and fuss-free functionality. In that respect there is not too much that requires support, although thankfully its creators have produced a sizeable FAQ area within the application.
Dipping into this section of the Mint app lets you find answers to most questions, although it requires persistence if you want to get to the bottom of less commonly asked questions. As a bonus, however, there is a chat option that lets you get in touch with staff around the clock at the Mint headquarters.
One of the best aspects of Mint is the ease with which you can get up and running (Image credit: Intuit)
Final verdict
If you struggle with keeping your finances in order, and even if you don't for that matter, Mint makes a lot of sense. It’s free, despite the downside of being beefed up to make money using affiliate offers within the software, and is very easy to use. In terms of getting started Mint could not be easier.
With the capacity of adding in some or all of your financial interests, and also removing them where needed, it is super flexible. The mobile editions deliver really good experiences too, with even the Apple Watch option being detailed and delightful to use, with piles of information on your financial status being available at a glance.
Mint also tops it all off with a safe and secure build, one that provides you with the reassurance that your sensitive data is in good hands.
CountAbout is pretty simple and straightforward in its structure. It has a web-based design that offers a reasonably comprehensive suite of onscreen tools that cover most bases when it comes to managing your finances. It’s really as simple as that and could come in very useful during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The extra bonus alongside the connected convenience is that it’s very affordable, and is therefore ideally suited to anyone who needs a helping hand with finance management, but needs to do it on a budget.
There’s a free 15-day trial available on the CountAbout website too, which provides you with the opportunity to try the service before committing to it and without the need to pay any money. So far, so good. It's up against the likes of Mint, YNAB, Quicken, Moneydance and Pocketguard in the budgeting software stakes.
Choose between a Basic or Premium edition with additional add-ons if you need them (Image credit: CountAbout)
Pricing
Currently, CountAbout keeps things nice and simple when it comes to the pricing and availability of its services. There are, in essence, two options to choose from with a simple-but-effective Basic package that costs $9.99 annually. For that you get full access to most of the CountAbout features and functions, although more advanced elements are off limits.
That means you can’t enjoy automatic downloading of bank, credit card and other transactions. There’s also a lot more manual input required. The good news though is that you can plump for a Premium edition instead, with a yearly cost of $39.99 and gain access to all of the extra options. For the money CountAbout therefore seems like pretty good value.
Adding a little more functionality for $10 a year lets you gain the ability to attach images to transactions. Similarly, there’s an invoicing add-on aimed at small-businesses that lets you create, send and track them, all for $60 extra per annum.
The CountAbut interface can be customized to suit a wide variety of budgetary needs (Image credit: CountAbout)
Features
CountAbout is certainly a practical solution, not least of which because it lets you import data from Quicken or Mint. When you sign up you're encouraged to do that early on, and there are some decent instructions that walk you through the steps.
You also get an easy access Account Maintenance approach, which during setup means you can select the option to have transactions automatically downloaded from the financial institutions you deal with. Once you’re into the main working area you’ll find that the interface is clean, fuss-free and easy to navigate.
The interface is additionally impressive in that it can be customized to suit your individual needs. For example, any kind of additional category can be added into the left-screen menus, while others that you don't need can be removed. If you need it the ability to add in and manage invoices is also another boon, especially if you’re a small business owner.
There are useful extra options, such as widgets and invoicing tools for small business owners (Image credit: CountAbout)
Performance
There’s an app edition of CountaAbout for both iOS and Android and either of these are decent enough supplements to the online browser edition. They do, of course, provide you with a one-stop option that can bypass the desktop model altogether if you prefer to keep tabs on your budgeting on the go.
We’re also encouraged about the way CountAbout has been designed and engineered, with a good level of encryption being built in to ensure that your financial data is as secure as can be. Indeed, CountAbout states that the only personal identifying information it collects from users is their email addresses, and these are not made available to anyone else either.
The other big bonus here is that CountAbout can be used in tandem with something like Quicken, which means that you’ve got a powerful arsenal of financial management tools at your disposal. And, in the case of CountAbout, that’s for a relatively small outlay too.
CountAbout is a paid-for solution although there is a free 15-day trial so you can check it out (Image credit: CountAbout)
Ease of use
You’ll find that CountAbout is really very simple to master, even if you’re something of a novice when it comes to online services. For budgeting and taking care of your finances, CountAbout takes it step-by-step with a very methodical page layout.
The service features main tabs along the top of the interface, which take you into the core day-to-day management areas of your finances, such as Transactions, Budgets and Reports. You can customize the interface too, with a Widgets option that allows the creations of additional tools aimed at comparing the different aspects of your financial activity.
We also rather like the Recurring tab, which lets you create and manage regular financial transactions, such as mortgage and rent payments. Meanwhile, the left-hand side of your screen contains other nuts and bolts options, such as an Accounts list, Categories and a Tag list too.
CountAbout's widget creation feature lets you beef up the potential of this online solution (Image credit: CountAbout)
Support
Help is always at hand within the CountAbout interface. There’s a dedicated link to the Help area at the top of the page and this takes you to a comprehensive information area.
Whilst it might look a bit spartan on first glance this assistance zone packs a decent punch once you get into its inner workings. If you’ve got a specific issue then it’s possible to open a ticket inside here, although you may find many queries and questions can be tackled by dipping into the Knowledge Base.
We also found the Suggestions area quite a good idea as this lets you tell CountAbout of any issues you think could be tweaked or improved during your experience of the online service.
Help is at hand whenever you need it thanks to a knowledge base and a ticketing system (Image credit: CountAbout)
Final verdict
Overall we think CountAbout has a lot going for it, not least of which is that impressive price tag. Even if you splurge and go for the Premium edition it’s pretty cheap. Combine that with a very easy to master interface, lots of fun and funky options, such as the ability to add custom widgets for even more powerful money management, and you’ve got a winning combination.
With a free 15-day trial at your disposal it’s really worth giving CountAbout a go and, with it’s minimalistic layout and help on hand when you need it, this budgeting service comes recommended. With a safe and secure design, plus the capacity for co-existing with something like Quicken you’ve got a beefy little option at your disposal if you need to get your budgeting in order fast.
CountAbout is pretty simple and straightforward in its structure. It has a web-based design that offers a reasonably comprehensive suite of onscreen tools that cover most bases when it comes to managing your finances. It’s really as simple as that and could come in very useful during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The extra bonus alongside the connected convenience is that it’s very affordable, and is therefore ideally suited to anyone who needs a helping hand with finance management, but needs to do it on a budget.
There’s a free 15-day trial available on the CountAbout website too, which provides you with the opportunity to try the service before committing to it and without the need to pay any money. So far, so good. It's up against the likes of Mint, YNAB, Quicken, Moneydance and Pocketguard in the budgeting software stakes.
Choose between a Basic or Premium edition with additional add-ons if you need them (Image credit: CountAbout)
Pricing
Currently, CountAbout keeps things nice and simple when it comes to the pricing and availability of its services. There are, in essence, two options to choose from with a simple-but-effective Basic package that costs $9.99 annually. For that you get full access to most of the CountAbout features and functions, although more advanced elements are off limits.
That means you can’t enjoy automatic downloading of bank, credit card and other transactions. There’s also a lot more manual input required. The good news though is that you can plump for a Premium edition instead, with a yearly cost of $39.99 and gain access to all of the extra options. For the money CountAbout therefore seems like pretty good value.
Adding a little more functionality for $10 a year lets you gain the ability to attach images to transactions. Similarly, there’s an invoicing add-on aimed at small-businesses that lets you create, send and track them, all for $60 extra per annum.
The CountAbut interface can be customized to suit a wide variety of budgetary needs (Image credit: CountAbout)
Features
CountAbout is certainly a practical solution, not least of which because it lets you import data from Quicken or Mint. When you sign up you're encouraged to do that early on, and there are some decent instructions that walk you through the steps.
You also get an easy access Account Maintenance approach, which during setup means you can select the option to have transactions automatically downloaded from the financial institutions you deal with. Once you’re into the main working area you’ll find that the interface is clean, fuss-free and easy to navigate.
The interface is additionally impressive in that it can be customized to suit your individual needs. For example, any kind of additional category can be added into the left-screen menus, while others that you don't need can be removed. If you need it the ability to add in and manage invoices is also another boon, especially if you’re a small business owner.
There are useful extra options, such as widgets and invoicing tools for small business owners (Image credit: CountAbout)
Performance
There’s an app edition of CountaAbout for both iOS and Android and either of these are decent enough supplements to the online browser edition. They do, of course, provide you with a one-stop option that can bypass the desktop model altogether if you prefer to keep tabs on your budgeting on the go.
We’re also encouraged about the way CountAbout has been designed and engineered, with a good level of encryption being built in to ensure that your financial data is as secure as can be. Indeed, CountAbout states that the only personal identifying information it collects from users is their email addresses, and these are not made available to anyone else either.
The other big bonus here is that CountAbout can be used in tandem with something like Quicken, which means that you’ve got a powerful arsenal of financial management tools at your disposal. And, in the case of CountAbout, that’s for a relatively small outlay too.
CountAbout is a paid-for solution although there is a free 15-day trial so you can check it out (Image credit: CountAbout)
Ease of use
You’ll find that CountAbout is really very simple to master, even if you’re something of a novice when it comes to online services. For budgeting and taking care of your finances, CountAbout takes it step-by-step with a very methodical page layout.
The service features main tabs along the top of the interface, which take you into the core day-to-day management areas of your finances, such as Transactions, Budgets and Reports. You can customize the interface too, with a Widgets option that allows the creations of additional tools aimed at comparing the different aspects of your financial activity.
We also rather like the Recurring tab, which lets you create and manage regular financial transactions, such as mortgage and rent payments. Meanwhile, the left-hand side of your screen contains other nuts and bolts options, such as an Accounts list, Categories and a Tag list too.
CountAbout's widget creation feature lets you beef up the potential of this online solution (Image credit: CountAbout)
Support
Help is always at hand within the CountAbout interface. There’s a dedicated link to the Help area at the top of the page and this takes you to a comprehensive information area.
Whilst it might look a bit spartan on first glance this assistance zone packs a decent punch once you get into its inner workings. If you’ve got a specific issue then it’s possible to open a ticket inside here, although you may find many queries and questions can be tackled by dipping into the Knowledge Base.
We also found the Suggestions area quite a good idea as this lets you tell CountAbout of any issues you think could be tweaked or improved during your experience of the online service.
Help is at hand whenever you need it thanks to a knowledge base and a ticketing system (Image credit: CountAbout)
Final verdict
Overall we think CountAbout has a lot going for it, not least of which is that impressive price tag. Even if you splurge and go for the Premium edition it’s pretty cheap. Combine that with a very easy to master interface, lots of fun and funky options, such as the ability to add custom widgets for even more powerful money management, and you’ve got a winning combination.
With a free 15-day trial at your disposal it’s really worth giving CountAbout a go and, with it’s minimalistic layout and help on hand when you need it, this budgeting service comes recommended. With a safe and secure design, plus the capacity for co-existing with something like Quicken you’ve got a beefy little option at your disposal if you need to get your budgeting in order fast.
Zoho Invoice is another addition to the growing roster of products from Zoho, the India-based company that has built up a reputation for good value software. With Zoho Invoice they’ve done another fine job, producing software that is aimed at small to medium-sized business owners looking for a powerful yet cost-effective invoicing solution.
Better still, Zoho Invoice has been tailored towards app use, which makes it an ideal option if you’re trying to keep the wheels of business turning while you’re on the go. With its ability to work alongside other business solutions and payment gateways it makes a good compliment to your existing business infrastructure, especially with the rise of coronavirus.
Zoho Invoice can be mastered by anyone thanks to its straightforward design (Image credit: Zoho Invoice)
Pricing
As with their other products, Zoho makes it easy to get acquainted with Invoice as there’s a version that’s completely free, although this is a single-user product limited to invoicing five customers. From there you can choose from a variety of options, which moves up to the Basic package, which is $9 per organization a month. This comes with the capacity to invoice up to 50 customers, but is still limited to one user.
Zoho Invoice also comes as a Standard package, which is its most popular, at $19 per organization per month. That lets you invoice up to 500 customers, with a three-user limit and 10 automated workflows capacity, compared to five with the other two.
A Professional package rounds it out, which is $30 per organization per month and allows unlimited invoicing, 10 users, 10 automated workflows and a custom domain too. Paying yearly also attracts a two months off discount.
Additional users can also be paid for, priced at €2 per month or $20 annually. Similarly, extra auto-scans can be purchased, with 50 a month priced at $5 or annually at $50.
You can manage payments with ease from within Zoho Invoice (Image credit: Zoho Invoice)
Features
Zoho Invoice comes with a full compliment of features and functions aimed at increasing the efficiency of your business. You can use the software to create and send professional-level invoices, as well as setting up your business to issue automated payment reminders and also accept subsequent credit card payments online.
For a personalised touch Zoho Invoice allows you to choose from invoice templates, which can then be customized to suit your business. Usefully, Zoho Invoice can also be used to create multilingual and multicurrency invoices, meaning it's a very versatile option, especially if you trade across geographical boundaries.
There is also the capacity for adding digital signatures as well as a suite of distribution options, including the capacity to automate a lot of your invoicing procedures. Zoho Invoice works in harmony with Stripe and PayPal as well as other Zoho products.
Zoho Invoice lets you create custom billing paperwork from within the app (Image credit: Zoho Invoice)
Performance
One of the most appealing aspects of Zoho Invoice is the app option, versions of which work for iOS, Android and Windows devices. For anyone wanting to get things done on the road, or who needs to stay on top of invoicing and other office admin on the go, Zoho Invoice thrives in this environment. If you're using it as a desktop application then the software is also plain-sailing. Its lean interface runs like clockwork.
Ease of use
There’s a very gentle learning curve when it comes to getting to grips with Zoho Invoice. The interface has been well thought out and is straightforward to use, even if you're not all that experienced with invoicing and other office administration tasks. In that respect it makes a great option, although the power tools on offer also means it’s suitably powerful enough for larger businesses.
The ability to generate reports with ease is a real boon, allowing you to drill down into the way your business is running and letting you make tweaks accordingly. Better still, thanks to the earlier-mentioned app version of Zoho Expense, for iOS, Android and Windows, it’s also easy to keep working if you travel a lot for business.
Zoho One is a package that lets you get premium support along with the usual help hub information (Image credit: Zoho Invoice)
Support
As with the other products that exist under the Zoho brand name you’ll find that Zoho Invoice comes well supported. That begins when you first start exploring the program interface, with lots of useful help files. The software is pretty intuitive anyway, so its unlikely you’ll get too bogged down along the way, but if you do Zoho also has a network of support options, with a Help Hub, Knowledge Base and Community options to choose from.
As part of its comprehensive Zoho One plan there are also three support routes for ongoing users of Zoho products, which includes Classic, Premium and Enterprise grades, depending on your staff numbers and their ability to get to grips with the software. The latter two options feature fees of 20% and 25% respectively of the licence fee you pay.
Zoho Invoice also features some excellent time management tools (Image credit: Zoho Invoice)
Final verdict
Zoho Invoice is a very commendable package that is certain to help small business owners get on top of their invoicing, billing and reporting duties. It’s priced realistically, with a free edition that while being limited is an excellent base-level option.
Meanwhile, the paid-for editions represent great value and can be expanded and scaled as and when it’s needed. With an impressive interface that can be mastered with ease and a selection of tools inside that allow you to tackle everything from taking payments through to printing out complex reports, Zoho Invoice offers SMBs pretty much all they’ll need.
LiveAgent is a complete customer service platform that combines help desk features with live chat integration. This cloud-based tool offers a unified way to handle customer support — letting businesses manage all interactions from a single dashboard.
LiveAgent simplifies communication across various channels. These include email, live chat, social media, voice calls, and video calls. It turns all customer queries into tickets, regardless of where they come from. This helps support teams track and resolve issues more efficiently. The software also includes features like automated ticket routing, canned responses, and a built-in call center. Together, these tools enhance the speed and quality of customer service.
With tools for faster responses and personalized interactions, LiveAgent has data to prove that it improves customer satisfaction and loyalty. It claims that businesses can see up to a 325% increase in conversion rates within the first month of using LiveAgent. Better customer service leads to higher retention, more positive recommendations, and increased sales.
LiveAgent serves a wide range of businesses, from small startups to large enterprises. But, it's most popular among retail and software companies, with many users in the U.S. and U.K. Thanks to its scalability, it's ideal for growing businesses and for those adapting hybrid work models. Larger organizations also find its features and integrations appealing for complex workflows. Whether you're a small e-commerce store or a multinational company, LiveAgent provides the tools to enhance your customer support.
LiveAgent's new 'Business' plans start at $15 per agent per month billed annually. (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Plans and pricing
Since our previous review, LiveAgent's Pricing page has had a revamp.
Paid 'Business' plans start at $19 per month per agent if billed monthly or $15 per agent if you're paying annually. The lowest tier 'Small' plan includes ticketing for up to three incoming/outgoing email accounts, two live chat buttons, 10 departments, a single live chat button, an API key, and the bespoke Knowledge Base. Ticket history is stored indefinitely and you can create up to 20 predefined answers.
The 'Medium' plan includes all of the above as well as ticketing for up to 10 incoming/outgoing email accounts. You also get five live chat buttons, 20 departments, custom domain hosting and most crucially Call Center Support. Prices start at $29 per agent per month if paying annually or $35 per month if paying monthly.
LiveAgent claims that their 'Large' Business plan is their most popular. This includes everything in the 'Medium' plan as well as ticketing for up to 150 incoming/outgoing email accounts. (We noticed though that when we signed up for a trial membership our Account page said that the 'Large' plan only offered 40 incoming/outgoing email accounts). You'll also receive 20 live chat buttons and three WhatsApp accounts. Other features include up to 150 departments (the account page says this is 50) and two knowledge bases. Prices start at $49 per agent per month if billed annually or $59 per agent if paid monthly.
The 'Enterprise' plan is LiveAgent's most expensive tier at $69 per agent per month if paying annually or $85 per agent if paying month to month. It includes all the perks of the 'Large' plan, plus ticketing for up to 500 incoming/outgoing email accounts. (Again our account page had a discrepancy with this, showing the number to be just 100). You'll also receive three WhatsApp accounts, 300 departments and 10 knowledge bases.
You can optionally add support for the social networks Viber, Twitter and Facebook/Instagram for $39 each per month. (Facebook and Instagram seemingly count as one social network as far as LiveAgent is concerned). This is disappointing, considering many similar platforms support popular social media networks like Facebook for no extra charge.
Each plan comes with its own set of limitations, which are explained well in the LiveAgent support pages. You can trial any of the paid plans for 30 days provided you have a company email address. But if you use a regular email, your trial lasts no more than seven days.
LiveAgent offers basic automated rules for auto-routing tickets and assigning importance (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Features
LiveAgent is a complete customer service platform. It offers many features that improve customer support operations. This software combines help desk functions with live chat tools. Businesses can manage customer interactions across multiple channels. From ticketing systems to advanced analytics, LiveAgent gives support teams the tools for efficient, personalized service.
The platform serves businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. LiveAgent scales with growing businesses, allowing them to adapt their customer service as they expand. Larger organizations also benefit from its robust, all-in-one solution. By integrating various communication channels into one dashboard, LiveAgent helps support teams handle customer queries effectively. This leads to better customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Omnichannel communication
LiveAgent's omnichannel communication feature lets businesses manage customer interactions across many platforms. These include email, live chat, social media, voice calls, and video calls. This helps customer support teams provide consistent service, no matter the channel. By centralizing all interactions, LiveAgent reduces response times and boosts overall customer satisfaction.
These omnichannel capabilities let businesses meet customers where they feel comfortable. This enhances the customer experience and drives loyalty. Customers appreciate the flexibility of communicating through their preferred channels, which can lead to higher retention rates.
Unified ticketing system
LiveAgent's ticketing system turns customer queries from every support channel into tickets. This helps support teams track, manage, and resolve issues from one place. It offers advanced features like automated ticket distribution, which sends tickets to the right agent or department based on set rules.
By simplifying ticket management, LiveAgent improves response times and resolution rates. This efficiency can boost customer satisfaction scores and increase customer lifetime value. The ticketing system also provides insights into common customer issues, helping businesses find areas to improve their products or services.
Real-time chat and visitor tracking
LiveAgent's real-time chat feature lets businesses engage with website visitors instantly. This provides immediate support and can turn browsers into customers. The platform includes customizable chat widgets, proactive chat invitations, and visitor tracking. These tools help support teams monitor visitor behavior and start conversations at key moments.
The real-time chat feature, along with visitor tracking, can greatly affect conversion rates. By offering timely and personalized support, businesses can guide potential customers through the sales funnel more effectively. Some businesses have seen a 325% increase in paid customer conversion rates within the first month of using LiveAgent, the company claims.
Automation and AI integration
LiveAgent now uses automation and AI to enhance customer service efficiency. The platform includes canned responses, which are pre-written messages for common questions. This saves agents time and ensures consistent communication. Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities help teams understand customer inquiries, sentiments, and intents in real-time.
These features allow businesses to handle more customer interactions without losing quality. By automating routine tasks, LiveAgent lets support teams focus on complex issues that need human attention. The increased efficiency can lead to faster resolution times, improved agent productivity, and higher customer satisfaction scores.
LiveAgent provides a complete set of analytics and reporting tools. (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Analytics
LiveAgent provides a complete set of analytics and reporting tools. These tools help businesses gain insights into their customer service operations. The analytics dashboard offers a quick view of incoming and outgoing messages, chats, and calls. This lets users monitor performance across different channels. With this bird's eye view, businesses can spot trends, measure agent productivity, and make informed decisions to enhance their support strategies.
Then there's the Performance Report. This report shows how the company, departments, or individual agents are performing. It includes metrics like average response times, ticket resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores. You can filter these reports by time, department, agent, tag, and channel. It helps managers identify top agents, find areas for improvement, and allocate resources effectively within the help desk team.
LiveAgent also provides specialized reports. Tag Reports show the most common customer issues. Channel Reports reveal which communication methods customers prefer. The Agent Ranking overview lists all positive and negative agent reviews, along with customer comments and links to specific tickets. All these features help businesses monitor and improve service quality, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For businesses wanting more advanced analytics, LiveAgent integrates with tools like Zoho Analytics. This integration enables deeper data analysis, including custom report creation, data blending from various sources, and AI-powered insights. With these robust analytics tools, businesses can discover hidden patterns in their data, forecast trends, and make strategic decisions to improve the customer experience.
The LiveAgent web app interface (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Ease of use
LiveAgent has a simple interface that lets support teams navigate seamlessly across features. But according to some users, it takes a minimal learning curve when initially setting it up. It features a universal inbox that consolidates all customer messages into one place, enabling agents to easily monitor and respond to inquiries from various channels.
The software is made to be easy to use, but many complain that parts of the interface appear old and require refreshing. People also sometimes have problems with performance, where the system will slow down or freeze, requiring a restart that interrupts work flow for a brief time. But other than these occasional problems, LiveAgent's simple way of managing tickets is generally an improvement for most support teams.
Onboarding is simple and welcoming. Installation times are described as quick, with the system being operational "in minutes." For companies searching for a help desk product that contains lots of features but is easy to use, LiveAgent provides a solid user experience that supports smooth customer service functions.
LiveAgent offers 24/7 technical support by phone, live chat, and email. (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Support
LiveAgent offers 24/7 technical support by phone, live chat, and email. There's also an extremely comprehensive online support portal.
We were particularly pleased to see a link at the very top of the portal to the new 'live status' page, which reported that unless you were relying on LiveAgent's New Jersey data centers, the network has been functioning perfectly for the past 90 days.
The 'Getting Started' section of the Knowledge Base also has some extremely useful articles, including the one mentioned above about the limitations of paid plans. There's a similar one for users of the free plan as well as a helpful video tour, which walks you through the basics like adding live agents.
The Knowledge Base also contains a dedicated video section with tutorials on common tasks such as adding live chat buttons, departments and email templates. It should be straightforward for you to create aesthetically pleasing knowledge repositories or FAQs for your customers.
You can easily create articles, how-to guides, and other useful information to meet the needs of every customer. Given that many modern customers prefer self-service, the support offered by LiveAgent's Knowledge Base could be exactly the kind of thing being asked for. But self-service doesn't mean offering inferior support. There are still plenty of bespoke options available, from forums to technical product guides.
The 'Tech Support' section is particularly weighty, containing almost 500 articles on subjects like integrating plugins, general tips and tricks, and how to set up various LiveAgent features.
Take some time to peruse the 'Awards and Certificates' section to see how LiveAgent ranks in the help desk solution industry.
LiveAgent claims they work with third-party security researchers to identify vulnerabilities. (Image credit: LiveAgent)
LiveAgent: Security
LiveAgent hasn't been slacking on this end either. The platform claims to use 'renowned' data centers protected by 24-hour surveillance, security cameras, and biometric locks.
All of the company's servers are hosted at Tier IV or III+, PCI DSS, SSAE-16, or ISO 27001-compliant facilities. The data centers are based in US, Asia and Europe - but you can choose to where you wish to store your data for compliance with local regulations.
Their pricing page also mentions that all accounts are secured using SSL to keep your data safe. After probing into the knowledge base, we found that LiveAgent uses TLS 1.2 encryption for all data during transit. Database backups are also fully encrypted when at rest.
Not all information in 'live' databases prioritizes encryption, however. But the company claims that sensitive information like passwords and login credentials is always secured.
LiveAgent's Security and Privacy Policy also notes that you can boost your security by configuring the Agent panel to only allow access from specific IP address ranges such as network addresses at your office site.
On the same page, LiveAgent claims they also work with third-party security researchers to identify vulnerabilities. Customers will have to take them at their word on this and there doesn't seem to be any links to the results of independent audits to prove it.
LiveAgent: The Competition
LiveAgent competes closely with helpdesk services like LiveChat, which focuses primarily on chat but also offers multi-platform messaging support. LiveChat offers prices comparable to LiveAgent’s All-Inclusive plan, from $20 per agent per month if you're paying annually. However, LiveChat doesn’t have a free plan for smaller businesses like LiveAgent does.
LiveChat’s chat functions are somewhat more robust than what LiveAgent offers. For example, it supports chat-to-SMS, customizable post-support surveys, and more advanced real-time monitoring of visitors on your site. However, LiveChat won’t help with phone support and some important administrative features like audit logs are restricted to its Enterprise plan.
LiveAgent: Final Verdict
LiveAgent is high-quality helpdesk software for businesses that want to integrate phone, email, and live chat customer support. The free trial is impressively fitted out for a thorough first-time user experience, while the plans aren’t outrageously expensive. We’d like to see cheaper support for social media accounts and the addition of chat-to-SMS, but these aren’t critical flaws for most businesses.
In addition to everything else, LiveAgent does a nice job with auto-routing tickets across teams and helping your support agents stay on the same page when dealing with an influx of customer requests.
Zendesk Support is a complete customer service helpdesk system. It brings together customer interactions from many channels into one platform. This cloud-based solution helps businesses track, prioritize, and resolve support issues efficiently. Zendesk acts as a shared inbox for your support team, collecting requests from email, chat, social media, and phone. It also offers tools to nurture customer relationships with more personalized interactions.
Zendesk Support offers many powerful features. These include multi-channel support, ticketing management, automation, and self-service options. The ticketing system gathers customer requests from various sources and manages them all in one place. Support agents can handle multiple tickets at once, improving efficiency. Automation takes care of repetitive tasks like ticket routing and follow-ups. This gives agents more time to tackle complex customer issues. Moreover, Zendesk's knowledge base and self-service tools help customers find answers independently through FAQs and AI-powered bots.
Zendesk's impact is no joke. A Forrester Consulting study found that a single organization received an ROI of $31.2 million over three years against a total cost of $8.1 million after implementing Zendesk Support. Companies like Spartan Race have also recorded a 27% sales increase after integrating Zendesk with their Shopify store. Many others reported different benefits, such as better response times and customer satisfaction.
Zendesk Support serves organizations of all sizes, from startups to large firms. Major companies like Uber, Shopify, Airbnb, Slack, and Netflix use Zendesk to handle millions of customer queries daily. The platform is often used by companies with 50-200 employees and $10-50 million in revenue. A flexible pricing structure makes it accessible to businesses at various growth stages, from small teams needing basic email support to large organizations needing full omnichannel capabilities.
As of 2025, there are three main plans for Zendesk Support (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Plans and pricing
Zendesk has a tiered pricing structure for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. As of 2025, there are three main plans for Zendesk Support:
Support Team: $19 per agent per month
Support Professional: $55 per agent per month
Support Enterprise: $115 per agent per month (billed annually)
The entry-level Support Team plan includes essential features. It offers a ticketing system, support via email, Twitter, and Facebook, workflow automation, and basic reporting dashboards.
For businesses needing more comprehensive solutions, Zendesk has Suite plans that bundle multiple products. The Suite Team plan starts at $55 per agent per month. It includes the ticketing system and omnichannel support through email, chat, voice, social media, and knowledge bases. It also has 24/7 standard chatbots.
The Suite Growth plan is $89 per agent per month, adding private internal collaboration, SLAs, multi-language support, and multiple ticket forms. The Suite Professional plan at $115 per agent per month enhances capabilities with customizable reporting, automatic ticket routing based on skills, and HIPAA compliance.
Enterprise-level businesses can choose the Suite Enterprise plan, which has custom pricing and advanced features. These include enhanced data protection, a sandbox environment for testing workflows, and sophisticated access controls for agents. All plans provide annual billing discounts compared to monthly payments, making them more cost-effective for long-term commitments.
Zendesk also offers add-ons, which can be purchased separately:
Advanced AI: $50/agent/month
Workforce Management: $25/agent/month
Quality Assurance: $35/agent/month
Advanced Data Privacy and Protection: $50/agent/month
Zendesk combines customer interactions from email, chat, social media, and phone (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Features
Zendesk Support provides a wide range of features to improve customer service across channels. At its core, Zendesk is a ticketing system. It brings together customer interactions from email, chat, social media, phone, and messaging apps. Its omnichannel approach offers a consistent experience for agents and customers. It also gives agents full visibility of customer interaction history.
In 2025, Zendesk updated its helpdesk platform with AI automation, customization tools, and advanced analytics. Zendesk supports businesses of all sizes, from early-stage startups to Uber, Shopify, and Netflix. It offers a lot of customization freedom, while still keeping the interface simple for non-technical users.
Omnichannel support
Zendesk's omnichannel support feature helps businesses deliver more well-informed customer service. It lets support teams handle all interactions from one interface. Your team can manage emails, live chats, social media, phone calls, and messaging apps without switching between tools. Zendesk's dashboard keeps track of past conversations, so agents always know exactly where they are jumping in.
As a result, customers too can move between channels without repeating themselves. Zendesk saves the context of their previous chats. And with smart routing, complex questions go straight to the right agents. AI chatbots also help, by answering common questions quickly. This leads to happier customers, better efficiency, and consistent service at every touchpoint.
Ticketing system
The ticketing system is the backbone of Zendesk Support. It turns customer requests from different sources into trackable tickets. Agents can manage multiple tickets at once without missing a beat. It boosts efficiency and ensures no customer inquiry is missed. Zendesk's workflow helps teams assign and track ticket status — like assigned, routed, or escalated — so all interactions stay on track.
With features like conditional and custom ticket fields, agents can collect specific details about support issues. This gives them the context needed for personalized support. The system also has agent collision detection, which alerts staff when multiple agents view or work on the same ticket. It prevents duplicate work and supports real-time collaboration. By centralizing customer support requests, the ticketing system speeds up resolution times, boosts agent productivity, and improves customer satisfaction.
AI automation
Zendesk's automation features are among its most valuable. They help deal with repetitive tasks that take up agents' time. The platform uses AI-powered tools to automate ticket routing, follow-up emails, and escalation processes. This lets agents focus on more complex issues.
Automation also helps with workflow management. You can set up triggers that start actions based on ticket changes or customer interactions. Custom macros let agents create standard replies for common inquiries. These can be shared across teams as templates. Overall, these features lead to better business results.
Self-service options
Zendesk helps customers find answers on their own with strong self-service tools. Businesses can build knowledge bases, community forums, and FAQs that tackle common questions without needing an agent. The basic plan allows companies to create and share help center articles in one language. Higher tiers support over 40 languages with more advanced self-service features.
Zendesk lets you publish support articles that can be added as widgets on a company's website. This makes information easy for customers to access. For those on Professional and Enterprise plans, Zendesk Gather lets businesses create online communities. Customers can connect with each other and the brand, giving feedback and boosting loyalty. These options lower ticket volume, cut support costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.
SLA management
Zendesk's Service Level Agreement (SLA) management helps businesses set response and resolution times based on ticket priority. Support teams can mark issues as urgent, high, or low priority. This ensures urgent customer problems get quick attention, while less urgent inquiries are still managed properly. SLA views let teams track status by the minute and avoid breaching their service commitments.
Real-time tracking and alerts notify agents when tickets near their SLA deadlines. This helps teams stay focused on high-priority issues. It also ensures accountability within support teams and provides clear work prioritization guidelines. However, businesses must set realistic SLAs to match team capacity and ticket volumes to avoid agent burnout.
Zendesk offers several analytics and reporting tools for customer service. (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Analytics
Zendesk offers several analytics and reporting tools for customer service. With customizable dashboards and detailed metrics tracking, businesses can gain valuable insights. The key feature, Zendesk Explore, helps managers monitor crucial performance indicators. These include ticket response times, resolution rates, customer satisfaction scores, and agent productivity in real time.
Zendesk's analytics dashboards are fully customizable. Managers can focus on data points that matter most to their goals. For example, if improving response times is important, teams can create dashboards showcasing real-time response data. If customer satisfaction is the main goal, they can highlight satisfaction scores and feedback trends.
The reporting tools in Zendesk gather data from various channels into one dashboard. Its omnichannel approach gives managers a complete view of customer interactions. They can track performance consistently everywhere, whether customers reach out via email, chat, phone, or social media. The platform also provides pre-built dashboards for quick insights and lets users create custom reports for specific analysis. Teams can even share reports with colleagues, promoting collaborative analysis and keeping everyone updated on past data and current trends.
Zendesk's analytics tools are strong, but they have some limitations. Custom report creation can be tough for those unfamiliar with data tools, plus there’s a learning curve for setting up dashboards properly. Some users find it hard to generate reports and question the accuracy of the data. For those needing more advanced analytics or integration with data from other sources, third-party tools like Power BI or SquaredUp can enhance Zendesk Explore.
Zendesk Support’s ticketing system aims to make support agents more productive (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Ease of use
After you’ve created an account and logged in for the first time, you’re presented with a getting started wizard to guide you through the first-time setup. With that done, you can move on to the dashboard, where you get an overview of all your tickets.
Hovering over a ticket will give you a popup with a quick view of the latest replies. Clicking on a ticket adds a tab for it to the top of the window for quick access later, (until you manually remove the tab). Each ticket has a lot of fine-grained controls, like setting the ticket type, its priority, tags, who it’s assigned to, and others who should be following it.
In general, Zendesk is intuitive and easy to use, but there were a couple of aspects we found could be improved. One is that a lot of functionality — like the ability to relate tickets, display the five most recent ones, and link tickets to others — has to be installed as separate apps. Installing these only takes a few seconds for each one, but a lot of this functionality seems like it could be included by default.
Another thing was that reporting is part of a separate app called Zendesk Explore. It’s still included with Zendesk's support solution, but you have to launch the platform in a separate tab or window. It has its own navigation, so it doesn’t feel as tightly integrated with the helpdesk as some of the reporting tools from other helpdesk solutions.
Zendesk advertises three main support channels (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Support
As a system designed to provide support to others, Zendesk itself features many of the support methods built into its own products, including a knowledge base, community forums, help widgets, and live chat (which is only available when you’re logged into your account).
Zendesk advertises three main support channels: a self-service help center, a community forum, and contacting their support team from within your product. There's also a Zendesk Community 101 video and you can comment on specific articles for further information.
Also, regardless of which payment plan you are signed up to, Zendesk Support users can purchase several add-ons for the support they receive. They can pay a little extra for 24/7 proactive support and engagement, professional services, and hands-on help with Zendesk Assist. So there's lots of support options to choose from.
Zendesk has 23 offices in various locations around the world, with many of them having phone numbers or email addresses listed, but office hours aren’t mentioned.
Zendesk includes a range of enterprise-class security features (Image credit: Zendesk)
Zendesk Support: Security
Help desk solutions make use of large amounts of customer data - some of which is bound to be of a sensitive nature. A single breach here could prove hugely damaging. Luckily, Zendesk is fully compliant with security and privacy frameworks like HIPAA and PCI DSS.
Zendesk Support has a globally distributed security team and uses AWS data centers, which have a number of on-site security measures in place like security guards and intrusion detection technology.
All communications with Zendesk and its APIs use encryption as standard, and customers can enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) or single sign-on (SSO) for end-user protection.
Collectively, this adds up to some pretty decent security. Plus, the company offers frequent guidance on security best practices for users. This is important because no technological safeguard can completely protect against human failings. So, it's essential that agents and other members of staff understand how best to keep customer information protected.
Zendesk Support: The Competition
Zendesk has a lot of competition in the online helpdesk space. Among the alternatives to consider are Zoho Desk and Freshdesk, which both offer free plans.
Freshdesk also offers five plans, with its free plan available for unlimited agents but with a limited feature set. The paid plans go from $15/agent/month up to $99/agent/month, and all plans come with a 21-day free trial.
Zoho Desk also has a comprehensive feature set, with four plans available, starting with the free plan for three agents and going up to $35/agent/month for unlimited agents. All paid plans come with a 15-day free trial.
There are also other help desk programs that work especially well with specific third-party solutions. For instance, Social Intents is an obvious alternative if you use Slack or Microsoft Teams a lot internally.
But there are sadly very few help desk tools that can compete with Zendesk Support on the integration front. And if you already use any of Zendesk's other platforms, it's a no-brainer to also employ Zendesk Support.
Zendesk Support: Final Verdict
Zendesk is competitively priced, but it doesn’t have a free option like some competitors. But it does have a large feature set and an impressive approach to customer security. And if Zendesk Support isn't enough for your team, you can always give the full suite a look, which is more of a complete solution with better pricing.
Zendesk Support's ticketing management system provides a lot of fine-grained control over tickets, but we found the separation of reporting into a separate app, and the fact that some functionality has to be installed rather than being included by default, slightly detracting from the user experience.
LiveChat is a real-time communication tool that lets businesses connect instantly with website visitors. It offers a customizable chat widget for websites or mobile apps. Unlike email or phone support, LiveChat gives quick answers to customer questions. This makes communication smooth and efficient.
LiveChat assists users in many ways. It answers product questions, resolves issues, provides tech support, and schedules appointments. It also helps convert prospects into customers. Support teams can reach out to website visitors based on their browsing habits. They can direct customers to review sites or social media, gather feedback, and handle multiple chats at the same time. With tools like canned responses, file sharing, and typing previews, agents can offer quick, personal support while managing up to six chats.
While there's a ton of live chat software in the market, LiveChat offers the most solid ROI improvements. 79% of businesses using LiveChat report improvement in sales, revenue, and customer loyalty. For instance, Sephora raised its average order value by 25%. Pioneer Millworks saw a 16% increase in opportunity value. And, Auto Accessories Garage experienced a 485% boost in conversions after using LiveChat.
Yet of the 76,000+ companies using LiveChat, most customers are small businesses with less than fifty employees. Its flexible nature allows employees from various departments to use it. But it's mostly picked up by sales and support teams looking for better automation. If you're wondering if LiveChat is right for you, this review will help you decide. We've spent the weeks putting the platform to the test from different angles, from going through the first-time user onboarding to dropping customer support requests. Here's what we have found.
Pricing options for LiveChat. Note that all prices are per agent (Image credit: LiveChat)
Plans and pricing
For almost all pieces of business software, cost is a key consideration. That's why this LiveChat review takes an early look at plans and pricing. LiveChat offers three basic plans, each of which is available through a month-to-month or annual subscription.
The Starter plan costs $20 per agent per month (paid annually) and is impressively full-featured. The biggest limitation is that you can only keep 60 days' worth of chat history. You also miss out on some customization and reporting features. This is a shame as customization is often a key reason why some business tools stand out from their competitors. This is certainly the case when looking at the best CRM software, where the advanced customization options of tools like Salesforce help is out-perform its rivals.
The Team plan costs $41 per agent per month and unlocks unlimited chat archiving, chat tagging, and file sharing through your chat box. You can also create reports to monitor your support activity and identify pain points for customers.
The reports are especially useful as they give managers added visibility into the performance of their support channels. With the reports and analytics features on offer, you can gain a general overview or in-depth data about your chat and agent activity.
The Business plan costs $59 per agent per month and offers SMS messaging from your chat box along with more advanced reporting. You can also add single sign-on to the Business plan for an additional $20 per agent. For larger businesses, LiveChat also offers an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.
You can test out the Team plan for 14 days for free before committing to LiveChat.
LiveChat offers reporting features to help you monitor your support quality (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Features
LiveChat offers a wide range of features to improve customer communication and support efficiency. The platform goes beyond basic messaging by providing tools that work together for a smooth customer experience. With over 200 integrations, LiveChat connects with major platforms like Shopify, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and WhatsApp to centralize interactions.
What makes LiveChat unique is its blend of strong functionality and user-friendly design. Support teams can handle multiple chats at once, share files, schedule meetings, and use canned responses while keeping a personal touch. Detailed analytics offer insights into customer behavior and agent performance, helping businesses improve support strategies.
Real-time communication tools
LiveChat's main feature is its real-time chat interface, which allows instant communication between businesses and customers. Agents can see typing previews, letting them know what customers are writing before they send messages. This helps agents prepare responses and speeds up resolution times, boosting customer satisfaction.
The platform also has proactive chat features. Businesses can start conversations based on visitor actions, like time spent on a page or exit intent. This can stop cart abandonment and solve customer issues before they escalate, leading to higher conversion rates and sales.
Customization and branding
LiveChat offers many customization options to match the chat experience with a business's brand. Companies can change chat buttons, widget styles, and window designs to fit their website. Adjustments include colors, animations, and even custom HTML buttons.
This creates a consistent brand experience across all customer interactions, which can enhance brand recognition and trust. Businesses with consistent branding have seen up to 20% more growth and 33% higher revenue than those with mixed messages.
Agent efficiency tools
LiveChat provides tools to boost productivity and response quality for support teams. Canned responses let agents quickly reply to common questions with pre-written answers. File sharing allows the exchange of documents and images to help solve problems. The queue management system ensures urgent inquiries are prioritized.
These tools enable one agent to manage multiple chats at once, unlike phone support, where agents handle one customer at a time. Agents can also switch conversations and collaborate, so that customers can get technical help faster. It reduces costs while keeping service quality high. Some businesses report handling up to 4,000 daily chat messages with just 50 agents.
AI-powered assistance
LiveChat uses AI technology with its writing assistant, Copilot. This tool helps agents navigate the platform and provides real-time insights. The AI can improve agent responses, suggest tags for chats, and create summaries, making support teams more efficient.
This AI integration automates routine inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on complex customer needs. The result is faster responses, consistent service quality, and less agent burnout, all leading to better customer satisfaction and retention.
Omnichannel integration
LiveChat excels at integrating customer communications across channels into one dashboard. It combines messages from websites, mobile apps, Facebook Messenger, SMS, Apple Business Chat, and email. This creates a central hub for all customer interactions and ensures consistent service no matter how customers reach out.
By providing a unified view of customer communications, LiveChat helps businesses maintain context and offer personalized support. Agents can see a customer’s full history across channels, reducing frustration from repeated explanations and creating a smoother experience that builds trust and satisfaction.
LiveChat integrates with more than 200 different apps, including Shopify, Zoom, Mailchimp, and Slack. (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Integrations
As we noted earlier, LiveChat integrates with more than 200 different third-party apps. For instance, if you're the owner of an ecommerce platform, LiveChat lets you display your products directly in the chat, organize tailored conversations with customers, and streamline the checkout process. Integrations include the ecommerce heavy hitters Shopify and BigCommerce.
There's even Zoom for LiveChat, because sometimes it's easier to discuss customer issues on video. Given the rise of hybrid work, more customers are likely to have become familiar with using video conferencing on a regular basis so may be more inclined to take option of using it within the LiveChat solution.
For marketing too, LiveChat offers some useful integrations. For example, it's easy to integrate with Mailchimp making it easy to send personalized marketing to customers following a chat. Other email marketing integrations include Constant Contact and ActiveCampaign.
Whether a CMS, CRM, messaging tools or marketing platforms are key to your daily operations, there is likely to be a native integration with LiveChat. This is hugely helpful for many businesses as they are likely to already have a suite of business tools that they use on a daily basis. The tight integrations offered here mean they won't have to change their existing tools to provide a seamless experience for customers.
LiveChat's reports give businesses actionable insights into customer service data. (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Analytics
LiveChat provides a full set of analytics and reporting tools. These tools give businesses actionable insights into customer service data. Firtst, the reporting dashboard shows key metrics in an easy-to-use format. This lets managers see performance trends, spot improvement areas, and make decisions based on data. But the analytics go beyond basic chat stats. They include detailed customer behavior, agent performance metrics, and predictive tools to help with staffing and resource use.
The Total Chats report is central to LiveChat's analytics. It shows chat volume trends over time — daily, weekly, or monthly. This report tells a story of customer interactions, not just numbers. It helps businesses see peak chat times and seasonal trends. Also, Staffing Prediction uses past data to estimate how many agents you need based on expected chat volume. This helps with resource planning. Other important reports include Response Times, Queued Chats, and Customer Satisfaction metrics. Each can be filtered by factors like date ranges, tags, agents, or departments to show the precise information needed.
LiveChat's analytics are even better with the Google Analytics integration. This lets you track chat events alongside other website metrics. The integration offers deeper insights into chat conversions and customer interactions. It helps companies improve marketing and sales strategies by understanding website traffic and visitor behavior. For those needing more advanced analysis, LiveChat provides powerful APIs. Plus, it can export raw data in many different formats for external business intelligence systems.
LiveChat doesn't just report data, but turns them into actionable insights. Its reports are easy to understand to begin with, even for those without data experience. But, managers can use additional insights to identify top agents, recognize common customer issues, track goals, and compare performance with industry standards. Sharing these stats with team members could also foster transparency and accountability. The option to create custom reports ensures your team can track metrics relevant to their goals.
LiveChat's chatbot interface uses a similar layout to Facebook Messenger. (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Ease of use
The LiveChat web app was, for the most part, seamless. The most important aspect, the messaging interface, uses a similar layout to Facebook Messenger. You can easily see all of your current chats and queued chats in a column on the left-hand side of the window, and then focus on a single chat in a center column.
On the right, you’ll get a detailed overview of the customer you’re messaging that includes what platform they’re messaging from, what pages of your site they’ve visited, and whether they’re a returning customer.
LiveChat also enables you to track hundreds of visitors to your website in real time. You can initiate a chat with any individual visitor and personalize your message based on the pages they’re currently exploring.
We found that LiveChat paid attention to details that make the support system even easier to use. For example, canned responses can be accessed instantly using a predefined tag. You can also add tags to a chat for archiving purposes at any time, rather than tagging it from memory when it’s archived.
LiveChat offers 24/7 chat support and a comprehensive online knowledgebase (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Support
LiveChat offers strong customer support. They are available 24/7 through live chat, email, and a knowledge base. This lets users get help whenever they need it. You can pick the support method that fits your needs and urgency.
Interestingly, LiveChat uses its own chat widget to offer support on their website. This serves as both a support channel and a demo of their product. It lets potential and current customers see the platform's features in action, even while getting help. The support team is known for fast response times and skilled agents who handle technical issues and product questions efficiently.
LiveChat also has a large knowledge base covering many topics, from basic setup to advanced features. A self-service option lets users find answers on their own, cutting down on direct support needs. For more complex issues or custom requests, LiveChat offers personalized help, working closely with businesses to adapt the platform to their needs.
Moreover, LiveChat offers dedicated support to new customers during onboarding. They help set up accounts, customize chat widgets, and integrate the platform with your existing tools. This very hands-on approach helps businesses start using LiveChat quickly, improving customer satisfaction with a faster time-to-value.
LiveChat supports two-factor authentication when logging in with Google (Image credit: LiveChat)
LiveChat: Security
LiveChat takes the security of your account very seriously, and all chats are protected by 256-bit encryption. Team and Business users can enable two-factor authentication, although we’d like to see this feature made standard for all users. (If you're unsure exactly what two-factor authentication (2FA) is, be sure to check out our post, "What is 2FA and MFA?" and everything should become clear.)
As a plus-point for LiveChat's security, administrators can also limit the number of IP addresses that can log into LiveChat at once to prevent unauthorized use of your support line.
To protect your customers, credit card numbers are automatically masked in chats and aren’t archived along with the rest of your chat history.
LiveChat: The Competition
While many helpdesk tools offer live chat, one of the closest competitors to LiveChat is SnapEngage. SnapEngage is dedicated to live chat and offers the same multi-channel support as LiveChat. It also offers HIPAA-compliance as an add-on feature (this is only available with a LiveChat Enterprise plan). However, we think LiveChat offers better value for most users since SnapEngage charges extra for many features, including SMS messaging, and doesn’t offer 24/7 support.
Of course, with the emergence of increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled chatbots, this is an increasingly competitive field. Other contenders for the title of best live chat software include HubSpot Live Chat and Tidio. However, in those cases, the software is either overly limited in its free version or simply overly expensive.
LiveChat: Final Verdict
LiveChat is an extremely powerful and flexible tool for messaging with your customers across all of your online channels. The platform integrates chats from multiple services, makes it easy to work within teams of support agents or across departments, and takes a proactive approach to support and security. The only thing we don’t love about LiveChat is the price tag, but given the quality of this software, we think it’s still solid value for your money.
Liberty Tax has been helping people with their tax affairs since 1997. While this IRS e-filing authorized provider does offer an online cloud-based software system, its core strength is backing that up with help from real advisors.
If you struggle with your tax filing or don't feel confident with the figures once you’ve finished then Liberty Tax could be the solution, allowing you to be sure that everything is as it should be prior to filing. Its tiered pricing structure has something for most users too.
Alongside its physical locations across the US, it has produced online tax software that’s reasonably easy to use and offers all of the features, functions and form capabilities for people with all sorts of tax filing requirements. Similar products such as TaxAct, TaxSlayer, Jackson Hewitt Online, Credit Karma Tax and FreeTaxUSA also compete for your attention in this packed marketplace.
Liberty Tax is currently available in three different package options (Image credit: Liberty Tax)
Liberty Tax: Pricing
In terms of products Liberty Tax currently has three tiered variations on the theme. Its Basic package starts things off at $45.95 (State Returns available for $36.95) and is ideally suited for simple tax situations. If you’re single or married with no dependents and have relatively little paperwork to pick through then this is a good starting point.
Next up, Liberty Tax has Deluxe, its $65.95 package (State Returns available for $36.95) aimed at those of us with slightly more complicated lives that can make filing time more problematical. It’ll help you get through considerations such as kids, investments, childcare costs, college fees and also covers home ownership when it comes to return time.
Top of the tree is Premium ($85.95 - State Returns available for $36.95), which is best for the self-employed, including freelancers and contractors, while it's also useful for tackling less common forms of income.
There are useful calculators within the Liberty Tax site to help you out (Image credit: Liberty Tax)
Liberty Tax: Features
When it comes to features then Liberty Tax has tailored its three packages to suit different needs and requirements. Basic, for example, supports Forms 1040, 8853 and Schedule A and B. Deluxe supports Forms 1040, 4562, 8829, 4136, 8839, 8853 and Schedule A, B, C. Premium offers support for Forms 1040, 4562, 8829, 4136, 4684, 4835, 8839, 8853 plus Schedules A, B, C, E, F, K-1.
You can work your way around the interface via a menu system that sits to the left-hand side of your web browser. This allows you to see the various sections that include My Return, Name & Address, Federal Taxes, State Taxes and File. From here it’s possible to work down through the various sub-sections. As an online experience the design is workmanlike, but is aimed squarely at getting the job done.
Signing up for Liberty Tax is a simple exercise in form-filling (Image credit: Liberty Tax)
Liberty Tax: Performance
Liberty Tax has been carefully designed to work without too much in the way of hassle, with a series of web pages that offer up simple form-filling layouts. Design-wise it has been tweaked compared to earlier editions, and the new structure has been revised in order to make your tax filing journey a little less complicated.
Work through the sections in series, as is intended, and you should find that Liberty Tax won't deliver any surprises. The main thing is to save your work as you go, as jumping around from section to section without doing this might result in data you’ve entered being lost. It’s all pretty basic, just as long as you use a little bit of common sense.
The big benefit is you can get your files checked at a Liberty Tax outlet (Image credit: Liberty Tax)
Liberty Tax: Ease of use
As is the case with rivals in this marketplace, Liberty Tax bills itself as a simple tax filing solution, with a website that hopes to remove much of the stress involved with the annual task.
Following your initial sign-up, which will included the creation of a username and password combination, the theme is much the same too, with a series of web pages that help you pick through the various sections of your tax documentation, based on the package you’ve picked to suit your background.
Depending on your personal tax situation this will include more obvious areas such as W-2, mortgage and childcare points, all of which forms the basis of your eventual filing documents. It’s quite a dry and formal approach but that’s to be expected given the subject matter. The review process, where you get the chance to pick over what you’ve entered, is subsequently able to highlight any flaws in your figures.
Liberty Tax is not available as an app but the site works okay on handheld devices (Image credit: Liberty Tax)
Liberty Tax: Support
There are several help and support options within Liberty Tax that should get to the bottom of most queries. This includes an ever-present Help menu tab at the top of every window.
There is also the ability to chat with a representative, or email a question to the support team, while the FAQs aspect of the service can often unearth answers to more everyday quandaries.
Of course, Liberty Tax sells itself as being there with human support when you need it, and with over 3,000 physical outlets across the US it should be pretty easy to get the back-up of a chat with a tax pro if you’re not happy with what you’ve entered into the site. Better still, it'll be an integral part of your chosen package.
Liberty Tax: Final verdict
Liberty Tax has made improvements to its online tax filing solution and this is certainly a better service than it used to be. Anyone looking for a reasonably straightforward tax filing assistant should find this one useful, even though it lacks some of the pizazz of rivals found in our guides.
A fairly humdrum site design isn't going to fire you with enthusiasm, though Liberty Tax is certainly a practical solution, while the lack of a dedicated app might be a turn-off for some. You can, however, still use Liberty Tax on a mobile device using the same site within the confines of a smaller screen.
The help aspect of Liberty Tax, at least in its online incarnation, could perhaps be improved too. The upside to all this though is that you can elect to have help from a real tax professional at the end of it, which is basically the whole point of services like this.
Expensify is a desktop and app service that aims to help business owners and employees manage their expenses using real-time money monitoring. It's a dynamic approach that works brilliantly for small and medium-sized businesses. However, Expensify has also been designed to let larger businesses keep an eye on employee expenditure too, but in a reassuringly straightforward fashion. Useful in the wake of coronavirus.
Central to this is the way that Expensify can automate much of the process, which means less work keeping an eye on things and better results in terms of tracking and processing expense claims. Adding to the usefulness of Expensify, particularly for the people who actually use it, is the way it has been engineered. Expensify offers a solid user-friendly experience and that’s always a bonus.
Expensify offers a trial version so you can test drive it without charge (Image credit: Expensify)
Pricing
There are two pricing variants for Expensify, depending on if you’re an individual or a company, although you can actually try it for free in order to check out how it works.
Package-wise, you can then choose Track for Individuals, which is $4.99/£3.99 per month. This is suited to individuals and sole proprietors for tracking receipts and expenses. You get unlimited SmartScans (OCR’d receipts), automatic mileage tracking and can auto-categorize expenses.
Next, Submit for Individuals, which is $4.99/£3.99 per month and is aimed at employees and small business owners to send receipts to managers or accountants. You get everything in Track as well as being able to auto-submit reports for reimbursement and also submit receipts to anyone.
Collect for Groups, meanwhile, is $5/£8 per month and is aimed at teams and organizations looking to automate receipt collection and reimbursement. That comes with everything in Submit, but also features the capacity to auto-sync to accounting software along with boasting powerful reconciliation functionality.
Finally, Control for Groups, which costs $9/£14 per month is suited to companies that need expense reporting, card management, approvals, and reimbursements. It features everything in Collect along with corporate card management and multi-level approval workflows.
Annual subscriptions options are probably the way to go if you have multiple employees to think about, details of which can be found on the Expensify pricing pages.
There are four basic packages of Expensify to choose from (Image credit: Expensify)
Features
The features come thick and fast in Expensify, with the app in particular being a really practical solution if you’re on the go. If you're busy working it can often be rather tedious to have to try and keep a firm grip on expenses you incur during the day. However, Expensify lets you track and submit your receipts with ease.
The feature list is pretty expansive too, with mileage and GPS tracking, automatic credit card import, corporate card reconciliation and pier diem functionality all built-in. Business users will also relish its easy integration with accounting software including QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite and numerous others.
An administrator can also set up Expensify to remove much of the legwork for employees who claim expenses, with a host of fully customizable settings meaning that many things are already figured out for you. Automatic generation of reports also means that there’s much less time involved in day-to-day administration duties.
Expensify works using an app or via the desktop edition (Image credit: Expensify)
Performance
You’ll most likely be using Expensify on the go via the app, which has been very nicely put together. Logging and tracking expenses requires little in the way of work and most of the time all you need to do is take a photo of the receipt and the app will do most of the actual cataloging of money to be reimbursed.
If you’re using Expensify via the desktop edition then that too works in the same fast and efficient fashion, with an interface that has little to go wrong. Speed is also a major factor in the way Expensify can generate detailed reports, which again makes collating lots of expenses and summarizing them a much less time-consuming task. You can share or print documents too, which is useful for meetings or review purposes.
Scanning receipts is a doddle using your phone or uploading via the desktop route (Image credit: Expensify)
Ease of use
A real bonus about Expensify is the way that it has been designed and engineered. From the minute you sign in you’re presented with a minimalist interface that is not only easy to get to grips with as it’s also very user-friendly.
With not much in the way of obvious obstructions you can soon be adept at using Expensify to keep track of your expenses. It’s also got a neat two-pronged setup that allows both individuals and groups to monitor their expenses, all of which is easily configured using an ever-present built-in Concierge.
Getting expense receipts into Expensify is also wonderfully simple, making it more appealing for less enthusiastic expense keepers. You can also download the app for your phone while you’re in the desktop interface.
Expensify also has a very impressive suite of reporting tools (Image credit: Expensify)
Support
You’ll find that there’s a vibrant support community if you're new to Expensify, with teams based around the globe, all focused on improving its features and functionality.
There's a vibrant Expensify community that makes a great bet for advice and help (Image credit: Expensify)
Final verdict
Being able to test out Expensify with little in the way of hassle makes it a great option to at least try, even if you’re not convinced that it’s going to be for you. However, soon after creating an account you’ll find that Expensify has an interface that is a doddle to get to grips with, and that extends to both employers and employees.
Using it on a day-to-day basis is quick and easy too, with a combination of basic usability and automated functionality making it very practical. Expensify has done a great job with ensuring that you can file expenses quickly, while the reports document everything in as much detail as you need. Finally, the reimbursement of funds is also nicely streamlined.
While it works for freelancers and sole-traders, it’s easy to see the appeal for small, medium and bigger businesses too, with a Corporate control version that’s particularly beefy.
